


set a mark on abel

by marchpanes



Category: Warchild Series - Karin Lowachee
Genre: Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-02-23
Updated: 2016-02-23
Packaged: 2018-05-22 19:10:35
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 523
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/6091147
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/marchpanes/pseuds/marchpanes
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Ash sees what they see in Joslyn Musey, because he sees it clearer in himself.</p>
            </blockquote>





	set a mark on abel

     Ash was wrong to love his father more; wrong to sign himself so early to a man so quick to die at the hands of half his keepers. The half they’re fighting now, the Hub, who turned on their own crew, on _Plymouth_ \-- just like they turned on _Kali_ , he supposes, when Falcone tells him that story. His father turned on _Kali_ , burnt it up, but Ghenseti was the Hub betraying both of them. It makes sense. 

     Ash was wrong to make that strike, to skirmish and get caught but not get killed, just locked inside of Chaos with the footsteps and the air and the dank smell of stolen steel of all the Hub he hates so thick it sinks around him through his skin and through his teeth. He might’ve heard the click of polished shoes somewhere above, two pairs, one very small, and the other is a man his father knew, but he only hears explosions and exhales. He later learns they saved the pirate’s pet before they figured out the keys to find his cell.

     Ash was wrong to care less about the orphan than its homeship, Genghis Khan, neé Kali, his father’s rival at the helm and down a protege. He goes to space and there he’s wrong to find Falcone and see his father, while in another world the orphan learns the jii Ash knew at four, clumsy strikes and Niko’s too-forgiving hands to guide them. Always so unworthy of his captors. 

     Ash was wrong to break the orphan’s wrist, but he is spiteful, he is charged, because he watched the same wronged fury with her many captured hands dance over Falcone’s chest and it flows from him. He breaks his wrist for stealing, like one steals a ship and leaves her captain orphaned. For taking what was Ash's, and turning its blade against him.

     Ash is wrong to cry. Niko kills his student while his own watches, _his_ dearest heart, his fatherlessness greater than Ash’s fatherlessness. Niko’s just a blade, held by the Hub, held by the hand that killed Markalan, that killed _Kali_ , and now would kill him too. Ash’s crime is not being the boy; being the other son, whose hurts can be more casually forgotten. Ash was always better, and in that Ash was wrong, because they only ever wanted worse. He’s guided by a memory he can’t wear around his neck, too mythical for missing or for dogtags, but even that’s too plenty to be worth it, too patched to get his wound a look in triage, and it’s blood too dried to tempt a hungry predator; Falcone is still the boy’s, right up until the boy’s no longer his. 

     Ash will always be his father’s student, but no matter where he looks he’ll never find his father in this universe; all fathers choose Jos Musey over him. His hurt’s an old infection gone untreated by the world, and it’s been years since Niko’s blade was drawn but now it finally moves to put him down-- the orphan who he didn’t choose to heal, who had no noted ranking in his heart.


End file.
